Are Apple's notebooks generally of low quality?

[Sopranino]

I have heard a lot about Macbooks heating up and all that stuff. Now is it true that in general Apple's notebooks are made using low quality material or something? Can the notebooks be classed as unreliable? Is Apple known for making cheap notebooks? Or is this all just in SOME notebooks like other manufacturers.

Apples notebooks are made using very high quality materials (high quality aluminum enclosures for example). They are NOT unreliable. I've been using a PB G4 1GHz machine for 4 years straight (and I'm not terribly gentle with it either), the only problem that has surfaced occurred in October of 2006 and that was the lower memory slot going bad which has effectively reduced me to just 512 MB. The machine still runs great, and if after 4 years of use that is the only thing to have gone bad then I think that it shows the overall high quality of the build. (I've just recently ordered the new MBP)

I don't believe that you would regret purchasing an Apple. Have fun, good luck.

Sopranino

 

[Jamiephofe]

Well yes, but when they receive no attention (like our Linux machines) then problems will develop.

Safari crashing on Apples website sounds weird though, could be a hardware issue or a reinstall could be in order.

Yup, could have been anything to be honest, I wasn't meaning to be anal about it. I'm sure a simple restart would have solved the problem. Firefox crashes way more on my PC. I just thought it was worth mentioning while on the topic of reliability.

- Jamie

 

[maverick808]

apples notebooks in general have superb design and quality for the prize. i compared them to the pc notebooks in our company (sony, ibm/lenovo, acer, dell).

they appear to be crappy for two reasons:

revision A problems. apple throws out core duos or LED screens or new case designs and of course there are initially problems that get widely reported. but usually after 3-4 month production gets better and the notebooks are fine.

apple users are anal. many things they complain about like yellow tinted LED screens, bent cases happen in other PC notebooks as well. people just accept it and do not complain. note that most complains of apple users are fully justified. however PC users seem to accept a lower standard.

my two cents derived from my experience in a company with ~200 people. generalizitions are of course always a bit arbitrary. but in general apples notebooks are great, sometimes they could be better.

I agree that Apple users are generally more anal (they are paying a higher price for their machines so that can often be excused). However, I use an awful lot of PC laptops too and I don't agree that they have more problems. I believe that Apple machines generally suffer more problems than Dell, HP, Sony or IBM laptops.

Furthermore, I find it unacceptable that everyone just knows that Apple's Rev A machines are going to be riddled with problems. No company should be firing out any machine, be it the first or 100th revision, without thorough testing. To compare, I've bought and used many Rev A Dells and never had problems with those. We should not put up with the fact that Apple's first revisions always suck, especially at the prices we pay for them.

Finally, I don't believe the problems are isolated to revision A machines. Look at the list of problems I gave earlier. They show widely acknowledged problems on Rev B, C and E machines. It doesn't matter what revision you buy, with Apple there's a high chance of problems regardless.

 

[Maxiseller]

Ugh, I hate the blinkered viewpoint you get on this forum. I love Macs, but I believe it is a fact that Apple have serious quality problems with their notebooks. Let's look at the list of defects that have been widely reported, and that I have seen on every single recent notebook revision.

1.67GHz PowerBook (Rev E I believe): Horizontal line issue on screen of all machines.

2GHz MacBook Pro (Rev A): Whine from motherboard, overheating, battery swelling, display flicker at low brightness settings. MagSafe power cables fraying and breaking. Noisy right fans.

1.83GHz MacBook: Top case discoloring, extreme overheating leading to widespread random shutdowns and even case fracturing. MagSafe power cables fraying and breaking. Noisy "moo-like" fan.

2.33GHz MacBook Pro (Rev B): Grainy displays, Apple used an extremely cheap display instead of a premium one.

2.4GHz MacBook Pro (Rev C): Cheap displays used again. Yellow tint at bottom of screen is widespread problem. Overheating seems to be a problem on these too. And again, flicker at low brightness settings returns on some machines.

In short, Apple's notebook releases since 2005 or earlier have generally suffered widespread problems due to abysmal quality control, cheap components and design flaws. Now, before someone replies saying "well mine is perfect!!!!!" please note that I am saying these issues are extremely widespread, but not on every single machine. It is possible to get the odd machine that doesn't have flaws. But you only have to look around these forums, Apple's own forums, and generally around the Web to see that the issues I have stated have indeed affected a massive number of Apple's notebook customers.

Please, I think Apple make superb software and DESIGN amazing machines. However, let's be honest, their quality control currently just plain sucks.

Ive got to agree here.

I mean, I'm not a great fan of all the moaning that goes on, but the sheer volume of issues of late does point to QC issues.

Function in Apples case does indeed come after Form which is not a precept which will produce excellent products in terms of QC issues, but I don't think I'd have it any other way.

For instance; my MBP. Love it, Love it, Love it! But...boy do I have to treat it gentle. It's like a high maintenance bad relationship; you love it, you love to look at it - heck sometimes you even want to lick it but you know that one tiny foot wrong and you're done for.

My tiny foot wrong was dropping a solitary small cash-box key on the top and now I have a scratch that drives me nuts. This wouldn't be a problem on a ugly Dell plastic machine (or admittedly on the macbooks) but I still wouldn't trade the looks of this thing!

 

[Henri Gaudier]

Ha ha ha. A very naive question to ask here.

Apple have made lots of stinkers. My worst experience was a G3 iBook. It just never f**king worked. After 11 months of hell they exchanged it for a G4 800 which was much better for 2 years and then it died. The cost of repair was more than the entry level iMac! 1500€ = 2 years. Brilliant.

I'm worried to hear all the problems with the latest laps as well. Including the SR's. Christ these things are too expensive to have these issues. I bought an Apple first and have stuck with it and so I can't say if anyone else is better. But Apple really aren't that great in their decisions of who makes their stuff. Remember Apple make bugger all they design it.

Hearing all these Rev A stories has put a dampener on the new iMac. I've been waiting for 6 months now and when it gets here it will probably be a 2.2Ghz pile of ****. 12 months wait for this one ... so will it be August 2008 for a Rev B worth buying?

 

[Sopranino]

I find it worrying when members post how amazingly perfect apple's notebooks (or computers in general) are.

I have lectures every day which are run using mac pro's and macbooks and they are far from reliable.

Even when I went into university last week to ask my tutor his opinion on the notebooks and he used his SR 17" macbook pro to access apples website, each time he clicked on the macbook pro section, his macbook pro froze. In the end we had to give up....

Reliable? Hardly. Better than a Dell running Vista? I'd say about the same, although it's worth mentioning that I have at least 1 class a week where a mac freezes several times. My university is also a digidesign protools and apple logic pro training facility, so we don't exactly have bad gear.

Please don't flame though, I'm actually spending £2000 on a notebook and logic this winter.

- Jamie

Which university are you at? I would love to talk to the prof with the MBP that freezes on a website click.....

Macs are used in pro audio applications precisely because they DON'T have a habit of freezing, let alone freezing several times in one class.

Sopranino

 

[Jamiephofe]

Which university are you at? I would love to talk to the prof with the MBP that freezes on a website click.....

Macs are used in pro audio applications precisely because they DON'T have a habit of freezing, let alone freezing several times in one class.

Sopranino

http://www.don.ac.uk/

http://www.don.ac.uk/mini_sites/arts/faculty_of_arts/music,_music_technology.aspx

Lee Sullivan


I'm sure he'll be very surprised to hear from you.

If you mention the meeting I told you about, I'm sure he will remember. It was only last week.

By the way, I'm the guy on the "Harvey Theatre" picture staring at a monitor, or possibly sleeping standing up.

- Jamie

 

[Sopranino]

....apple users are anal. many things they complain about like yellow tinted LED screens, bent cases happen in other PC notebooks as well. people just accept it and do not complain. note that most complains of apple users are fully justified. however PC users seem to accept a lower standard. ....

Very insightful comment. I don't think that I would have thought of it quite like that but I think you've pretty much nailed it on the head...... anal ........ *chuckle*

Sopranino

 

[Phil A.]

We've got 2 Rev. A MBPs (15") and a Rev A BlackBook. Not had a single problem with any of them.

 

[iW00t]

http://www.don.ac.uk/

http://www.don.ac.uk/mini_sites/arts/faculty_of_arts/music,_music_technology.aspx

Lee Sullivan


I'm sure he'll be very surprised to hear from you.

If you mention the meeting I told you about, I'm sure he will remember. It was only last week.

By the way, I'm the guy on the "Harvey Theatre" picture staring at a monitor, or possibly sleeping standing up.

- Jamie

Which university are you at? I would love to talk to the prof with the MBP that freezes on a website click.....

Macs are used in pro audio applications precisely because they DON'T have a habit of freezing, let alone freezing several times in one class.

Sopranino

What are you going to say to him?

 

[Jamiephofe]

Which university are you at? I would love to talk to the prof with the MBP that freezes on a website click.....

Macs are used in pro audio applications precisely because they DON'T have a habit of freezing, let alone freezing several times in one class.

Sopranino

It may be worth mentioning logic pro + synthesis and sampling classes. That's if you consider Logic Pro and ESX24 Pro Audio applications.

- Jamie

 

[Sopranino]

What are you going to say to him?

Part of the problem with getting a second hand report on an issue or having the problem reported by somebody who may not understand what was occurring is that it can lead to information getting skewed. With that in mind I would like to find out from him exactly what he was doing when trying to access the site, what other apps he had loaded at the time, what exactly occurred just prior to the 'freeze'. Has he experienced this problem with other sites and has the problem reoccurred since.

Should be interesting, I'll post back the results of any correspondence.

Sopranino

 

[elithrar]

If you're posting on a Mac forum you're generally going to see a large amount of complaints about Apple products. Personally, as I've said in a few threads, my 15", 2.4Ghz SR MBP is literally perfect.

 

[Sopranino]

It may be worth mentioning logic pro + synthesis and sampling classes. That's if you consider Logic Pro and ESX24 Pro Audio applications.

- Jamie

Well to be totally honest I don't consider Logic Pro to be an industry standard DAW (that honor belongs to ProTools). I personally use Motu's Digital Performer for recording and processing classical music recitals.

Are you studying sound engineering?

Sopranino

 

[Jamiephofe]

Part of the problem with getting a second hand report on an issue or having the problem reported by somebody who may not understand what was occurring is that it can lead to information getting skewed. With that in mind I would like to find out from him exactly what he was doing when trying to access the site, what other apps he had loaded at the time, what exactly occurred just prior to the 'freeze'. Has he experienced this problem with other sites and has the problem reoccurred since.

Should be interesting, I'll post back the results of any correspondence.

Sopranino

I would like to point out 2 things if I may.

First, Lee is a tutor at a University, it may be possible that he will not reply in the helpful manner that you are asking the questions. He simply doesn't have the time.

Second, be aware this is an Apple certified training centre. This basically means the staff act the same as Apple fans in denial. When we have issues the tutor simply says "er...hm....how did this happen, I don't understand."

With those 2 points in mind, I hope you get the information you are looking for. I would also like to know why this happened, but if I went into detail with him about it, he would have told me he doesn't have the time.

- Jamie

 

[Jamiephofe]

Well to be totally honest I don't consider Logic Pro to be an industry standard DAW (that honor belongs to ProTools). I personally use Motu's Digital Performer for recording and processing classical music recitals.

Are you studying sound engineering?

Sopranino

I use Logic Pro and Pro Tools together for my studies.

To be honest I prefer Pro Tools for my work, that's why I have a Pro Tools setup at home on a PC.

The only reason I'm buying the macbook pro is for logic. I also used DP and I also prefer it to Logic.

- Jamie

 

[PDE]

Ive got to agree here.

I mean, I'm not a great fan of all the moaning that goes on, but the sheer volume of issues of late does point to QC issues.

Function in Apples case does indeed come after Form which is not a precept which will produce excellent products in terms of QC issues, but I don't think I'd have it any other way.

For instance; my MBP. Love it, Love it, Love it! But...boy do I have to treat it gentle. It's like a high maintenance bad relationship; you love it, you love to look at it - heck sometimes you even want to lick it but you know that one tiny foot wrong and you're done for.

My tiny foot wrong was dropping a solitary small cash-box key on the top and now I have a scratch that drives me nuts. This wouldn't be a problem on a ugly Dell plastic machine (or admittedly on the macbooks) but I still wouldn't trade the looks of this thing!

I agree too. To those who have old powerbook G4s - that doesn't count! Apple's qualty control has gone downhill for years, but it seems to have accelerated since the end of 2005 with the last generation of powerbooks. My old powerbooks were generally great, but it's not like they didn't have issues too. I had a rev A titanium powerbook G4 and it was replaced several times (in those days Apple didn't seem to ever replace anything so I was lucky) for various issues - like flickering screen, no audio out. The wallstreet powerbook G3 had a few issues too when it first was introduced, like overheating, thin rubber that would peel off, a graphics glitch, poorly design hinges etc. And then the powerbook G4s with white spots all over the display -

Apple has always been lousy at quality control, but these last few years seem have been particularly bad both for macbooks and macbook pros. What do we mean by quality? Materals? Components? Reliability? I think Apple computers are VERY reliable in terms of general functioning. You seldom hear of people whose machines completely stopped working! But everything else I think is pretty poor: keyboards that stop working properly, keys that break off, macbook plastics that spontaneously crack, defect inverters that cause screen flickering, MBP bulging/warping aluminum, displays that are grainy with poor viewing angles and unevcen illumination, macbook plastics that scratch the minute you look at them - I mean, the list of stuff goes on and on. Luckily, even with these problems the computers continue to work! it's more an issue of Apple not living up to its own design/quality goals, but continuing to charge the customer a premium for a quality that only really exists in teh minds of their design team.

Maybe Apple's design ambitions cannot be properly realised in the consumer market of today? It would just be too expensive.

 

[BlackMax]

So is this defect rate normal for the current Macbooks lineup or is it still higher than other manufacturers?

If you look at the customer satisfaction ratings published in PC Magazine or several other computer publications you will see that Apple notebooks are consistently rated very high in quality and customer satisfaction.

For example, PC Magazine's August 2006 Reader's Choice Notebook Survey which has Apple at the top of the pack.

Apple is at the top. Its overall score, 9.1, is significantly better than the average for Windows notebooks—and a full seven-tenths of a point better than Lenovo's overall score, 8.4. Its scores for reliability (9.2), tech support (8.5), and likelihood of recommending (9.4) are also significantly better than average. Yes, its score on percentage needing repair is merely average, but at 16 percent, it's the lowest of the survey (alongside Sony's 16 percent).

Is this a function of that unique passion Apple users have for the company's products? Perhaps. But, again, it's hard to question the number of units needing repair. Among first-year systems, only 7 percent needed repair—2 points better than Sony.

Lenovo's notebook scores nearly match Apple's. Manufacturer of the popular IBM ThinkPad computers as well as a new line under its own brand name, Lenovo garners an overall score of 8.4—significantly better than average, as are its scores for reliability (8.6), tech support (7.8), repair (7.6), and likelihood of recommending (8.3).

Over the past ten years between home and work I have owned Apple, IBM, Dell and HP notebooks. My experience mirrors those of PC Magazine's survey with my Apple and IBM notebooks being the best machines I have owned.

As others have noted, all notebooks can have problems and folks who encounter problems with their notebooks are usually more vocal than those who encounter no problems. Just be sure you have a good warranty for whatever you choose to purchase and you'll have piece of mind.

 

[odaiwai]

Believe me, it happened. My tutor tried accessing the macbook pro area of the website 3 times and it froze all 3 times. Obviously he could do the apple equivalent of ctrl + alt + del to fix it, but it shouldn't happen in the first place.

True, we didn't spend the time restarting the machine, but for that price should we have to?

- Jamie

There is a pretty substantial difference between Safari freezing and the entire machine freezing. I've had occasions when Firefox will randomly crash, but it seems to sort itself out after a while and not do it again. Maybe after a reboot, not sure, as I rebooted once or twice during my trip below.

I've had a new MacBook which went from the Box to a five week work trip around Queensland. Apart from some hassle with Firefox (which required just using Safari to workaround), it's been incredibly reliable and really robust. I would have half a dozen documents open in Word/Excel and just close the lid and travel to the next location. I never lost a single document.

Just about the only issues I really had were the seething jealousy of my colleagues at the size of the power brick, the fact that it would reliably sleep and wake up on a lid close, and the silence of it. (Once an office fell deeply silent. I thought the aircon had turned off, but it was just my colleague turning off his HP Laptop.)

 

[Jamiephofe]

There is a pretty substantial difference between Safari freezing and the entire machine freezing. I've had occasions when Firefox will randomly crash, but it seems to sort itself out after a while and not do it again. Maybe after a reboot, not sure, as I rebooted once or twice during my trip below.

I've had a new MacBook which went from the Box to a five week work trip around Queensland. Apart from some hassle with Firefox (which required just using Safari to workaround), it's been incredibly reliable and really robust. I would have half a dozen documents open in Word/Excel and just close the lid and travel to the next location. I never lost a single document.

Just about the only issues I really had were the seething jealousy of my colleagues at the size of the power brick, the fact that it would reliably sleep and wake up on a lid close, and the silence of it. (Once an office fell deeply silent. I thought the aircon had turned off, but it was just my colleague turning off his HP Laptop.)

The only thing I'm genuinely worried about is the QC of the screens, but I think I've ranted enough in this thread

- Jamie

 

[Sbrocket]

Believe me, it happened. My tutor tried accessing the macbook pro area of the website 3 times and it froze all 3 times. Obviously he could do the apple equivalent of ctrl + alt + del to fix it, but it shouldn't happen in the first place.

True, we didn't spend the time restarting the machine, but for that price should we have to?

- Jamie

I dunno, that sounds awfully like user error to me. It could be any number of things like something the computer owner interfering third-party software that destabilized WebKit or some other component. There wasn't some widespread Safari bug that caused everyone's machine to crash when they visited websites, so obviously it was specific to that machine's setup. Yeah, that just screams user error and you can't blame Apple for not making a mistake-proof (or idiot-proof) operating system.

 

[Taylor C]

As said before, the original Core Duo models were quite buggy, but the newer one's are very well built.

 

[Foxglove9]

Apple's are generally higher quality I notice. Just from experience over the last 5 years, other than a hard drive dying out over time all my friends ibooks and powerbooks have lasted years with no problems.

My PC laptop friends are always experiencing troubles. For example: 2 coworkers of mine bought 2 pc laptops in the last year. They had to return both of them in the first month because of hardware issues. Just about everyone else has major issues with their PC laptops in their first year of ownership (mostly due to software issues).

 

[CRAZYBUBBA]

I just had this discussion.

In my experience, Performa, iMac G3, Powerbook G4 its been excellent.

 

[jklps]

The impression I get is that in terms of quality it goes like this:

$400 eMachines/ACER < Dell Inspiration/HP Mid Range < Apple < Thinkpad/Dell Latitude/Other Business Laptop.

So Apple's quality is pretty good, and excellent for a consumer machine, but if you are prepared to spend enough you can get better quality hardware elsewhere.

Dell Latitude's are hit or miss...